Matteo POV
The study was empty by the time I returned to it.
The chairs were still positioned the same way they had been during the conversation, and I stood in the doorway for a moment looking at them before walking to the window and sitting on the ledge there instead.
I had told her the truth in that room. Every word of it had been true.
That child is ours. All three of us. Full stop.
I believed that. I still believed it. But belief and feeling are not always the same thing, and alone in the dark, with no one to be steady for, I let myself acknowledge what was actually moving around underneath what I had said.
I was not angry. That surprised me. I had expected anger, the specific kind that comes with uncertainty about something you cannot resolve by acting, and I had braced for it on the walk back from the study. It had not arrived. What came instead was quieter and considerably more unsettling than anger would have been.
Fear.
